Villages damaged by two tremors along border with Pakistan

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KABUL, Afghanistan — An earthquake destroyed homes and killed five people near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan on Sunday, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Army rescue teams were on their way to the remote mountainous area, said Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi.

He said details from the damaged villages in Paktika province were sketchy and it was not known exactly what time the quake struck.

Pakistan's Seismological Center in the city of Peshawar said two quakes were registered along the border area early Sunday. One was magnitude 5.2 and hit just after midnight local time, while the other was at dawn and was magnitude 4.9, it said.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has several bases in Paktika and a spokesman for the force, Sgt. Ty Foster, said he had no reports of any damage to military property or equipment.

Afghanistan was spared much of the damage that hit Pakistan and India when a 7.6-magnitude temblor killed at least 79,000 people there earlier this month. That quake killed three Afghans and damaged only a handful of homes.